Cheap The Family Crucible (Book) (Augustus Y. Napier) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Family Crucible

A Fantastic Read!!!
The Family Crucible is MUCH more than a review of the tecniques involved in family therapy. It is an invaluble resource because every family, not just those in critical situations, undergoes stress, change, and conflict. I would not describe this as a "how-to" book. Rather, it's an "ah-hah" book - it would be impossible to read this without seeing some aspect of your family in the pages. VERY insightful as well as just a good read.

---

Growth in Family Interactions
In the context of an absorbing story of one family's therapy, Augustus Napier, with his cotherapist, teacher, and the founder of the symbolic-experiential model of family therapy, Carl Whitaker, articulately presents many of the most provocative and cutting-edge concepts in family psychology making the book a user's guide for anyone in a family or interested in better understanding the phenomenal interactions and implications thereof.

Whitaker's model, exemplified throughout the therapy, "is a multi-generational approach that addresses both individual and family relational patterns in the process of therapy. Oriented toward personal growth (rather than stability) and family connectedness, the therapist assumes a pivotal role in helping family members dislodge rigid and repetitive ways of interacting and substituting more spontaneous and flexible ways of accepting and dealing with their impulses" (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2000).

The premise of the symbolic-experiental model is that "it is experience, not education, that changes families" (Keith and Whitaker, 1982).

The engaging account of the Brice's therapy, alongside other personal antidotes and systematic explanations by Napier and Whitaker, provides a greater understanding of one's self (esp. learning how to experience oneself in a new way) and the implications of a systemic approach to all human interaction.

Recommended with fervor!

---

Published in '78, still relevant today
This is an insightful and engaging read.

Everything is wrapped up in the complex dynamics of the family. Napier and Whitaker take the approach that 12-year old daughter is having some issues, then bring the whole family in and conduct therapy on them as a family. The problems of the individual are so deeply intertwined with the problems of the family.

Napier and Whitaker do a bang-up job at presenting the material. This could have easily been a book of boredom filled with psycho-babble dry academic lifeless trifle, but no, it's not. Instead "The Family Crucible," makes the point of family therapy by telling a story, an extended case study. We follow along with the family of five as they show how one member's problems is related to the family. The therapy shifts from daughter to son to parent-interaction with daughter and son, and finally the couple's marriage that really is at the heart of the issue. The good docs even go so far as to call in the grandparents to get at some real issues the family is dealing with.

You begin to care about this family seemingly as much as Napier and Whitaker do, and you want the best for them. Along the way, the authors share their poignant view on family dynamics and also, somewhere along the way...there's a reader epiphany. There's the oh, there's the yes, there's the "that explains it." In our ever growing quest here on this earth to live together and understand humanity and the humanity we call family and live with day to day, this book goes miles beyond any expectation.

Get your hands on, "The Family Crucible," and talk with your family about it. I know, I am.